


War of Attrition

by orphan_account



Category: Tokyo Ghoul
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Body Horror, M/M, Medical Experimentation, Needles, Vomiting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-06
Updated: 2015-11-06
Packaged: 2018-04-29 20:45:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 8,636
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5141912
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mutsuki Tooru is the first test subject in the CCG's experimental project to turn humans into half-ghouls not through kakuhou transplantation but through the injection of RC cells into the body. Unfortunately, this procedure comes with side effects: muscle soreness, digestive system issues, confusion and memory alteration, and a final monstrous transformation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. october: muscle soreness at injection site

**Author's Note:**

> A big shoutout to Kammy for giving me the RC cell injection idea, and for helping me write this fic!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for misgendering halfway through this chapter (after the ......). That's the only time it happens in this fic.

A red bump rose from Mutsuki’s skin at the place where the needle had punctured his body. The bump looked like an insect bite save for the black bruising that fanned in a smudgy circle from the injection point. Beneath the bruising, the flesh of Mutsuki’s abdomen tightened in a distinct cramp. It felt less like period pain and more like a stitch in his side from running, but the pain centered just above and to the right of his navel--the spot where he had injected the RC cells twelve hours previous.

The night before, Mutsuki held the full syringe in one hand and set the glass bottle on the counter with the other. He sat on the lid of the toilet with his shirt discarded on the floor alongside a bottle of alcohol and a cotton ball that Mutsuki had, seconds before, used to clean the injection site. Injections were hardly new to Mutsuki, since he had been injecting testosterone into his thigh for three months at that point, and he knew the routine. 

Once the skin had dried, Mutsuki pinched his flesh to the right and just above his navel with his thumb and index finger. With his other hand, he carefully lowered the needle to his body. The needle stung as it pierced his skin and buried in his fat, but Mutsuki clenched his teeth tightly and depressed the plunger. The clear liquid drained out the needle and into his body. Though he was growing accustomed to giving himself injections, the overdramatic part of his brain always imagined a worst-case scenario in which he accidentally shoved the needle so far into his abdomen that it sliced through his muscle fibers and punctured his stomach. 

As usual, Mutsuki was able to withdraw the syringe without incident and discard it into the small biohazard bin underneath the sink. Just as Mutsuki shut the cabinet, someone knocked at the door. He had encountered several problems with living in the Quinx Squad apartment, mostly about privacy, but one of the most annoying was having to explain to his various housemates to just leave the biohazard bin under the sink alone. 

“Mu-chan, are you still in there?” Saiko complained from outside the door. She knocked, and then knocked a couple more times for good measure. “Hurry up!”

“Just a second!” Mutsuki assured. He quickly returned the alcohol and the bottle to the medicine cabinet, threw away the cotton swab and the syringe wrapper, and pulled his tee shirt back on over his head. 

He opened the bathroom door and Saiko pushed past him. She slammed the door shut behind her. Rather than join Urie and Shirazu where they were playing video games at the TV--Mutsuki wasn’t that good, anyway--he returned to his room. 

That was the first of the weekly RC cell injections he would give himself for the next two months until a health kakuhou and kagune formed. Mutsuki was the first human test subject in the Red Child Project.

……

_three months previous_

“Well, Investigator Sasaki, one thing you should know about this candidate is that she is...well, the conditions for her contributions to the Quinx Project were that we would provide her with sex-change procedures and allow her to live as a man. However, as her superiors, you and First Class Mado are both being notified,” Dr. Shiba explained.

Haise opened the manila folder and scanned the lines of information and the image of the young investigator. Mutsuki Tooru, age nineteen, fresh out of the CCG academy and looking terrified in the identification photo. 

“Do you mean _he_?” Sasaki asked.

“Excuse me?” 

“Well, you said he was living as a man. Do you mean to refer to Rank Three Mutsuki as _he_?” Sasaki corrected. He attempted to keep the curtness out of his voice: Sasaki identified as agender, though he’d never tell anyone at the CCG, and certainly not Dr. Shiba. He just hoped that he could help Mutsuki, at least a little bit, feel more comfortable in an organization that had never been comforting to Sasaki.

Dr. Shiba looked at Sasaki blankly over the desk. Sasaki held back a sigh.

“Anyway,” Shiba continued. “As you can see by looking through the documents, Mutsuki has been allowed to live as a man under the condition that she participate in the Red Child Project, a highly experimental new initiative that will be running alongside the regular Quinx Project.”

Sasaki glanced down at the folder again. The words _Red Child Project_ were printed, appropriately, in red ink beside Mutsuki’s name. 

“What will the Red Child Project entail for Mutsuki?” Sasaki asked, still trying to avoid annoyance. He already knew what the other new quinx investigators were undergoing to earn their keep as CCG employees, but this project was new to him. It wouldn’t surprise him, based on the CCG’s previous projects, if the Red Child Project were dangerous in some way to the new test subject.

“Rather than receiving a kakuhou transplantation, Mutsuki will be injecting herself with red child cells. This will force her body to generate a natural kakuhou. She will be starting these injections in three months, once she has acclimated to the team and her body is strong enough to receive the injections. After that, a fully-formed kagune should develop within two months.”

Sasaki nodded, but privately he thought that it sounded even more dangerous than the kakuhou transplantation. He had never heard of humans being able to grow kagune under any conditions; the closest that humans came to it was RC Cell Oversecretion disease, in which humans developed grotesque and uncontrollable kagune-like protrusions from their eyes and pores. He didn’t want to see Mutsuki mangled and dying like a ROS disease patient in five months time.

Sasaki decided, then, that he would look after Mutsuki, if Mutsuki let him. 


	2. october: digestive system issues

Mutsuki ducked out of the meeting room. Once he was in the hall, he immediately rushed for the bathroom. He never used the bathroom in public: it was too stressful choosing between the men’s and the women’s restrooms, but the moment forced him to pick one and he rushed into the men’s room. Thankfully no one else was in the bathroom, and he was able to rush to one of the stalls unimpeded.

Nausea rushed through his body the moment he saw the toilet, and he bent over retching. His stomach pain had prevented him from eating much breakfast that morning, but he lost what he had been able to eat. Mostly he felt the hot sting of bile in his throat and the acidity coating his tongue as he vomited. The combination of the vomiting and the pain in his abdomen made him feel like his stomach was being turned inside out like a sock. Once the vomit stopped pouring from his lips he stood up, breathing heavily and wincing at the sour taste in his mouth. Mutsuki wiped his lips with a wad of toilet paper and flushed the toilet.

The stall was cool against his back through his shirt as he leaned against it. He let himself slide down so he was crouched on the floor. He should have been getting back to the meeting, but a dull cramp still coiled in his abdomen and vomiting had left him feeling breathless and weak. He relaxed against the wall with his forehead on his knees.

He would have to tell Dr. Shiba, probably. Digestive issues was an expected side-effect, but it might indicate to Dr. Shiba that Mutsuki’s body was unfit for the experiment. They could discontinue the experiment--but, Mutsuki realized, the experiment was what kept him tied to the CCG. What would happen if he quit? Would he lose his housing because he could no longer work with the quinx squad? Lose his job because he wasn’t strong enough? Urie and Shirazu were strong and Saiko had been head of the class at the Academy. But they must have selected him, Mutsuki thought, because he was the perfect control group for the experiment: a blank slate, weak and helpless without the implanted ghoul traits. 

There was no way he could quit yet. He would survive the early side-effects, heal, and then move on. Mutsuki’s legs shook slightly underneath him as he stood and stumbled to the sink. In the mirror he looked pale and sweaty. He bent down to the sink and slurped some water into his mouth, then swished it around his teeth to hopefully wash away the taste and smell of vomit. He spat into the sink and saw the red tint to the water. He spat again and flecks of blood sprayed into the white sink. 

He could survive. He had to; he couldn’t be weak. None of the other quinxes were begging to quit. Mutsuki washed the blood from his mouth and returned to the meeting. 

……

That night, Mutsuki woke sweating to a soreness in his lower back. The sheets clung to his skin and sweat pooled anywhere skin touched skin. He pushed the sheets aside and was accosted by the cool air in the room. It froze the moisture on his body. Sweaty, shivering, and in pain, Mutsuki hauled himself out of bed and hobbled to the bathroom. Each step sent a jolt of pain up his tailbone and into the aching region of his back. Dr. Shiba had warned that the initial formation of the kagune would hurt as it split Mutsuki’s skin, but Mutsuki hadn’t expected the bone-deep ache that radiated from his tailbone to his waistline. 

The sudden light of the bathroom blotched Mutsuki’s vision. Before the black smudges cleared, however, Mutsuki had hitched his shirt up to his chest and pulled his boxer briefs low on his hips so he could examine the painful area of his back. He stood with his back to the mirror and looked over his shoulder at the red-and-black coloration of his skin. The central point of the bruising was a splotch of intermingled dusky purple and black about five centimeters above his tailbone that diffused out to bright red in a hazy circle. 

Mutsuki reached back and gingerly touched the center of the circle. He recoiled as his fingers brushed against a subtle protrusion in his back: the kagune was growing within him and he could feel it straining at his skin like a moth in a chrysalis. It might break through by morning. Mutsuki bent down and opened the cabinet below the sink. To the left of the biohazard bin was an elaborate first aid kit. Most of the small bandages and cut cream had been used up in the aftermath of training exercises, but he found an unused roll of gauze and some medical tape. He stood and, while keeping his shirt up around his armpits, awkwardly began to unroll the gauze around his lower back. If the kagune split the skin before morning, Mutsuki didn’t want to bleed in his bed.

Once he had taped up the gauze wrap and repositioned his clothing, Mutsuki returned the supplies to the first aid kit and turned off the light. Pain warmed his back as he returned to his bed and carefully arranged himself on his side so as to limit the amount of pressure on the blossoming wound. 

……

Mutsuki padded out into the living room with a book under his arm. He hadn’t expected anyone to be out there, but the light over the couches was on, and Mutsuki could see Sasaki’s head over the back of the couch. Sasaki looked over his shoulder as Mutsuki entered the room, and Mutsuki saw that he was wearing his round glasses.

“Mutsuki,” Sasaki whispered. “Can’t sleep?” 

Mutsuki hesitated, wondering whether he should just go back into his room. But Sasaki was looking right at him, and it would have been even more awkward to return to his room without saying anything.

“No, I can’t. I came out here to read,” Mutsuki replied. He continued around the side of the couch and stood in the middle of the living room, unsure of whether to sit on the other end of the couch beside Sasaki or across the room on one of the other seats.

Sasaki solved his problem by motioning for Mutsuki to sit down on the couch beside him, and Mutsuki accepted the invitation. Sasaki was dressed in sweatpants and a sweatshirt, and sat with his legs curled underneath him and his book in his lap. With his large glasses and his hair mussed, possibly from tossing and turning before abandoning his attempts at sleep, he looked more vulnerable than how Mutsuki usually saw him. Mutsuki was reminded of how young he actually was: twenty-two, barely older than the young quinxes, and in his pajamas and glasses looking more like one of them than a superior. 

“Is there something on your mind?” Sasaki asked. There was no way Mutsuki was going to tell him about the smarting pain in his back, nor about his fears that he was failing as a quinx investigator. His surprise must have shown on his face, because Sasaki continued: “I’m sorry, I don’t want to be intrusive. I just thought I should check in.”

“Oh, um. It’s okay, I’m fine. Don’t worry,” Mutsuki stuttered. Sasaki was watching him intently, and Mutsuki could see genuine concern in his expression. He felt slightly guilty about not telling Sasaki about his problems--but on the other hand, how could he when he couldn’t even tell Dr. Shiba?

“What are you reading?” Mutsuki asked, hastily changing the subject.

“Oh, it’s just some poetry,” Sasaki said with a shrug. He pushed his glasses up on his nose, which Mutsuki instantly decided was a cute gesture. _Not_ that he was thinking that way about his superior. Just, hypothetically, if Sasaki hadn’t been Mutsuki’s superior, he would have found it cute. 

Mutsuki stayed silent, unsure of what to say. He aimlessly toyed with the edges of the pages of his book. It was a novel, a fluffy romance he had picked up at the bookstore the previous week, and he hoped Sasaki didn’t ask him what he was reading. 

“Do you want me to read a couple poems aloud?” Sasaki asked suddenly. He was smiling broadly, and looked very much like reading poetry aloud to Mutsuki would make him extremely happy. Mutsuki liked his eager smile.

“Sure,” Mutsuki replied. He pulled his knees up to his chest and rested his head on top of the couch cushion. Sasaki began to read, and Mutsuki was surprised at how normal he sounded. His voice was quiet and calm; he paused at the right points in the poem, but not overdramatically and without a hint of pretension. When he finished the first poem he went onto another, and Mutsuki found himself relaxing more into the couch. His back felt better without the pressure of his body against the mattress, and he was really quite exhausted.

Sasaki read another poem, and by the time he started a fourth Mutsuki’s eyes had fallen closed and his breathing slowed to a sleepy rhythm. Sasaki’s voice really was lovely. In the part of his brain already halfway entrenched in sleep, Mutsuki wondered what it would sound like for Sasaki to say _Tooru._

……

Mutsuki woke to darkness and a sticky wetness on his lower back. His hands immediately went to the back of his shirt, which was soggy in a circle around the point where the kagune was breaking through the skin. He scrambled off the couch and turned on the light to check the couch for stains, but there were no marks of blood on the upholstery. He relaxed slightly, but he still had to deal with the fact that he was covered in blood, and he could feel fresh blood oozing from the wound.

Mutsuki shut off the light and hurried back to his room. Sasaki must have turned off the lights when he left, because the living room was cast in shadow. Mutsuki had no idea how much time had passed since he had come out of his room. He was glad that no one could see his blush of embarrassment not just that he had fallen asleep in front of Sasaki, but that he had fallen asleep while Sasaki was _reading poetry to him_. The other quinxes wouldn’t let him hear the end of it if they found out. 

Saiko was snoring when Mutsuki returned to the room. In the dim moonlight filtering through the window, he could see that she had pulled the sheets all the way over her head so her body under the blankets looked like a little dumpling. She didn’t stir when Mutsuki shut the door and went into the bathroom. 

He switched on the light and quickly turned so he could see his back in the mirror, then pulled his shirt up to reveal his back. At the center of the circle of bruising was a bloodied hole in Mutsuki’s back. Protruding from the gash was a little spur of hard tissue like the tip of a knife shoved through Mutsuki’s abdomen and emerging from the other side. The kagune had begun to grow in.


	3. november: immature kagune growth

The kagune had been growing in slowly for a month. Mutsuki had bought reusable bandages and wrapped them around his body under his undershirt every day to hopefully hide the tip of the kagune that stuck out from his back. It had only grown out a few centimeters, but Mutsuki still wore only his loosest shirts and was careful when bending forward. In the apartment, he always wore sweatshirts to conceal the bump that emerged from beneath his clothing. The wound stopped bleeding freely as Mutsuki’s accelerated healing developed, but some mornings he would wake up to pinpricks of blood on the back of his tee shirt as the kagune tore his flesh upon exiting his body.

That night, Mutsuki sat in the bathroom administering the second of his two RC cell shots for that week. Dr. Shiba had doubled his dosage starting that week in hopes of speeding up the kagune growth that had been going slower than was anticipated. As soon as he pressed the plunger and sent the second shot coursing into his body, heat began to well up beneath his skin. It surged from the injection site into his back and warmed his torso from the bottom of his binder to his tailbone. It wasn’t pain: it was just the heat of insect bite or the skin around a wound. 

Mutsuki took a towel from the bathroom back into his room and spread it out on the bed just in case the bleeding became more intense during the night. He was used to the occasional stained pair of underwear, but he wasn’t eager to leave bloodstains on his sheets. He got into bed, but the heat was enough that he pushed off the sheets and sprawled on his side, sweating from his armpits and the middle of his back. 

The blood came just as Mutsuki was falling asleep.

……

Someone was shaking Mutsuki’s shoulder. He felt like he was wading through a murk of sleep and pain that stood between him and proper functioning. A vicious sting split through his back. Noises came out of his mouth but he wasn’t sure what they meant.

“Muchan, wake up,” Saiko insisted. She shook Mutsuki’s shoulder again and he managed to open his eyes. She was already dressed for work. Mutsuki glanced at the clock on his bedside table--it was already past nine, and he felt like complete shit. He was lying on his side, but he could tell there was something protruding from his back under the sheets. 

“I’m up,” he grumbled. If he was getting up after Saiko, something must really be wrong. “Can you leave so I can get dressed for work?” he asked. 

“Fiiiine,” Saiko responded, then she was gone from the side of the bed. It was routine that he asked his roommate to leave when he was changing his clothes, but she still made sure to fuss about it every time just to screw with him. Mutsuki heard the door open, and once it had shut he hauled himself into a sitting position. His hands immediately went to his back. 

He could feel a wetness at the waistband of his underwear and the back of his shirt where blood had soaked the fabric. As he sat up he gathered the blood-soaked towel in his arms. Thankfully he and Saiko’s shared room had an attached bathroom and he didn’t need to walk through the kitchen in bloodstained clothes to examine the wound. 

In the bathroom he shucked his underwear and his tee shirt and stood naked in front of the mirror. Underneath his clothes, blood caked his dark skin around a vertical gash that had opened in his lower back. From the tip of the wound protruded a bloodstained hunk of flesh shaped like the end of a knife blade. It jutted from his back just about the length of his hand. With a wad of toilet paper Mutsuki began to wipe off the immature kagune. Even under the blood, the kagune was dark red. The top edge was sharper than the bottom, and Mutsuki avoided it. Upon inspection, its texture was not like flesh but like fingernails, only much harder. It felt warm under Mutsuki’s fingers. Each time he touched the kagune it sent shocks of pain down into the cut from which it emerged. 

The kagune seemed to wriggle inside Mutsuki’s body. Pain swelled from his back and nausea rose in his throat. Mutsuki supported himself on the countertop and watched as the kagune grew just another centimeter. Blood welled from the cut again and streamed down his back. He clasped his hands to his lower back to keep the blood from landing on the floor, but it still dripped over his hands and onto the tile.

“We’re going to leave without you if you don’t hurry up!” Saiko shouted from the room outside.

Mutsuki was panicking. Blood flowed freely over his hands and pooled on the floor. 

“I….um, I can’t go to work today. I’m sick. Leave without me,” Mutsuki called in return, trying to keep the frantic lilt out of his voice. Still clutching his back with one hand, he turned on the shower. Blood streaked the faucet. The water was still cold, but he climbed in under the stream and rinsed the blood from his hands. He let the water wash his chest; he was sure it would sting when he turned around and exposed the wound to the water. Gritting his teeth in anticipation of pain, Mutsuki turned around. The cool water pounded the cut and watered-down blood pooled at his feet. Exhausted, Mutsuki dropped to a crouch in the shower. He could feel the fin of kagune sticking out of his body with every movement. 

Eventually the water ran clear of blood and Mutsuki stepped out of the shower into the cool of the bathroom. He wrapped his towel around his body and gathered up his bloodstained clothes. Before stepping out of the bathroom, he cracked the door and listened for noise in the apartment. It was silent; everyone must have left for the day. He crossed the room and shoved his bloodied clothes in his laundry basket; he could deal with them later.

His back was no longer bleeding, but it was aching enough that he swallowed a couple of painkillers with water from the sink--even though they probably wouldn’t do very much to help him. As a cautionary measure Mutsuki spread a dry towel down on his mattress--he knew his back would bleed more and stain the towel, but it was easier to explain those stains than dark blotches on the sheets. It was all very practical and clinical, and the process calmed Mutsuki’s lingering panic. He still feared hiding the kagune from the other residents of the apartment, especially Saiko, and it stirred the panic in him again to remember that he still had no idea how to control his kagune.

But he could practice today. Using the kagune, Dr. Shiba had said, was just like controlling any other limb. Mutsuki decided that would be his productive activity for the day as long as he was confined to the apartment.

Mutsuki knelt on the towel on his bed and pulled off the towel he still wore wrapped around his body. He knelt there naked so as not to stain any more clothing, then rolled the towel up and hooked it up under the kagune, pulling it tight to his body to catch the blood that would surely leak from the cut. He tried to put his mind in the kagune: tried to feel where it emerged from his skin, tried to feel the place where his body continued beyond where it had once been. He focused on his back: focused on the place where the kagune left his body, where the wound was raw and hot, but he couldn’t find anything there besides pain. He felt like he was falling into it. Heat rushed up through his torso and up his arms until his fingers tingled with it. 

The kagune ripped through his flesh like a snake breaking from an egg. Hot blood flowed onto the towel Mutsuki clutched around his hips. He desperately arched his back and tried to stop the progression, but there was nothing he could do except wait for it to stop growing out of his body. But it wouldn’t stop. It felt long and unwieldy sticking out of Mutsuki’s back like a tail or an inconveniently-placed leg. Pain tore all the way from Mutsuki’s tailbone up to his waist as his body was pried apart by the growing kagune. 

He screamed. He pressed the side of his hand into his mouth and bit down to quell the scream, but that just left more pain flaring in his hand and did nothing for the agony in his torso. Mutsuki felt like he was splitting open in the middle of his back: like his flesh was peeling away to bare the glistening bones of his spine to the daylight. Tears spilled from his eyes like the blood that streamed so freely from his wound.

Finally the growing stopped. The pain quieted to a deep sting. Mutsuki looked over his shoulder and saw that the kagune had grown as long as his arm. The further growth had revealed a joint where the blade of the kagune connected to a second segment, the end of which was still buried in his body. It was no longer straight, either: the kagune curved gently to the right at the joint like an arm with a bent elbow. Blood clung to the part of the kagune that had just birthed itself from Mutsuki’s back. 

Mutsuki felt faint and sick. It was too much blood; too much pain. The kagune kept slithering out of his body. It curved out and around and back into Mutsuki’s line of sight. His entire body was shuddering with pain and tears blurred the kagune in his vision. Through his tears he could see that it was jointed like a centipede.

And then it stopped moving. Mutsuki could feel the flesh slowly stitching itself back together as his accelerated healing mended the wound. The kagune was a huge, ungainly extra arm protruding from Mutsuki’s back--he could feel it throwing off his balance even where he sat. The towel he still clutched around his waist was soaked with blood, but the stream had slowed to a trickle. Drops of blood dripped from the kagune onto the floor. Mutsuki reached out and touched the smooth surface of the kagune. It was blood red with thick veins of darker red, almost black, below the surface. It was slightly shiny and reminded Mutsuki of a smooth stone veined with quartz.

The kagune remained still in the air. Mutsuki wiped the tears off his face and breathed deeply in relief from the pain that had thrummed in his back for hours, and from the ache that had resided quietly in his body for the month since the kagune had begun to break the skin. He almost began to cry again out of a combination of relief and fear that the pain would return when he tried to move the kagune. If he figured it out, and if he didn’t he wasn’t sure what he would do. He couldn’t contact Dr. Shiba…could he ask Sasaki for help?

But he didn’t need that yet. He could do it on his own. 

……

 _are you okay?_  
_yeah_  
_do you need anything?_  
_no thanks_  
  


Three hours had passed and Mutsuki was staring at his phone, reading a rereading the messages he and Sasaki had exchange two hours previous. He was trying to convince himself to ask for help. Sasaki would gladly help him; he knew Sasaki had been concerned for him since he started the experiment. It wouldn’t be inappropriate to ask for help--Sasaki was there to help him train and become a better investigator. 

Mutsuki closed the text conversation and tossed his phone onto the bed. At least he could move the kagune now. He experimentally curled and uncurled it above his head; he extended it behind his back until it brushed the wall and then pulled it back in close to his body. He couldn’t move it unless he was looking at it, but he had managed to get fairly proficient with it. He remained naked and seated on a towel because every once in awhile more blood seeped from the wound, though it never resumed the free stream from earlier that day. 

All his muscles were sore and he felt mentally and emotionally drained. It was surprising how much effort it took to move this new limb, and especially how much it offset his balance when he stood. It was much easier to control it while he was sitting down, and in any case his legs were too shaky to stand on comfortably. 

Mutsuki twitched when he heard the door of the apartment open and shut. There were footsteps in the kitchen, the sound of someone putting something down. He scrambled to his legs and, feeling weak, stumbled to his dresser. The kagune trailed behind him, curving up and over his head like a scorpion’s stinger. He quickly pulled on a loose tee shirt and a pair of sweatpants that hung low on his hips to accommodate the kagune growing from his body. The footsteps were drawing towards his room.  
“Mutsuki?” Sasaki asked. He knocked on the door gently. 

Mutsuki froze. He remained silent. He could tell Sasaki to come in and receive the help he wanted, or he could keep quiet, or he could try to get Sasaki to go away. No words were coming out of his mouth. 

“I’m going to come in,” Sasaki warned. He slowly opened the door and Mutsuki didn’t stop him. Sasaki’s eyes widened, but that was the only sign that he was surprised to see Mutsuki like that. They both remained silent for a moment, eyes locked.

“Are you--” Sasaki began.

“I need--” Mutsuki said at the same time. They both stopped talking, then Mutsuki continued. “I need help,” he blurted. “I can’t get my kagune to go back in. I can control it but I can’t make it--I can’t make it stop.” Mutsuki’s legs suddenly gave out underneath him and he stumbled to sit on the edge of the bed again. Sasaki stepped into the room and came to stand by the desk across from him.

“Don’t worry,” he assured. “I can help you. I wish you’d texted me and let me know sooner. You sound exhausted.”

Mutsuki nodded pathetically. He could feel himself turning red with shame and immediately regretted letting Sasaki come into the room. Tears threatened, but he wasn’t going to let himself cry in front of Sasaki. 

“It’s good you’ve been able to control it, though,” Sasaki said encouragingly. He gestured towards the kagune, which Mutsuki had curled behind him. “You’re a natural,” he smiled.

Mutsuki almost laughed. This was thoroughly unnatural. But he appreciated Sasaki’s efforts to make him feel better. They would have worked if not for the bone-deep exhaustion Mutsuki felt and his desire to just get it over with. 

“But you don’t need me to say that. You just need help,” Sasaki said. He crossed his arms and leaned on Mutsuki’s desk. “So let’s try to figure this out.”  
“Thank you,” Mutsuki said.  
“Of course, it’s my job,” Sasaki replied. “And I’d help even if it weren’t. So...you have to relax. Don’t force it. The kagune responds to stress, so it won’t retract if you’re still feeling stress.”

Mutsuki smiled wryly. He didn’t exactly know how to stop himself from feeling stress. His entire body was weak with anxiety. 

“Do you want me to read to you again? That seemed to work last time,” Sasaki suggested, and Mutsuki’s face got even redder. He quietly cursed himself for being so prone to blushing, and hoped his dark skin tone would hide some of the color.

“It’s fine, really,” Mutsuki replied quickly, even though it did sound like a good idea. Sasaki’s voice was just so pleasant when he was reading. 

“Okay...how about I just tell you about the day, and you try to relax and not think about your kagune?” 

Mutsuki nodded. He wasn’t sure how this would help, but he thought he might as well try. He scooted back up on the bed and sat, cross-legged, trying to relax into the mattress. Sasaki pushed himself up to sit on the desk. He began talking as he unbuttoned his left sleeve and begun rolling it up past his elbow, then repeated it with the other sleeve. With his sleeves rolled up, Mutsuki could see the muscles of his forearms moving as he talked with his hands. 

“Saiko fell asleep in the first meeting again today, and I had to wake her up because Shirazu was going to draw on her, and I couldn’t have Arima seeing that,” Sasaki said.

Mutsuki laughed. He laughed, and he felt his kagune twitch. A slight pinch of pain accompanied the kagune sliding down into his body a few centimeters.

“Oh! Did that just work?” Sasaki asked, surprised. 

“I guess so,” Mutsuki replied. “I think it helps if I laugh.”

“Oh no...now I have to be funny. I don’t know how to be funny, Mutsuki! I only know puns,” the expression on Sasaki’s face was one of such confusion that Mutsuki couldn’t help but laugh. He felt the kagune collapse into his body even further.

“Just, um, keep talking? I think it’s working,” Mutsuki said. 

“Okay, well, um...I mean, I should probably be at work, I probably shouldn’t have come back to the apartment. But I trusted that Urie and Shirazu wouldn’t kill each other in the office for just a while. Do you think I was right? Oh, what if Suzuya comes along? They’re all going to die,” he giggled, and Mutsuki thought it was the greatest sound he’d heard in a while. 

The kagune was slowly sliding back into Mutsuki’s body, and not just when he was laughing. As Sasaki kept talking, it retracted into Mutsuki’s back until it was completely collapsed into his body again. Mutsuki felt the wound closing itself up.

“Thank you for helping me,” Mutsuki said. 

“Of course,” Sasaki said with a smile.


	4. december: confusion and memory alteration

“Are you experiencing any confusion or memory alteration?” Shiba asked. He was jotting notes down in Mutsuki’s file.

Mutsuki thought back to the weeks of forgetting that had followed the increased dosage. He hadn’t told Sasaki about that: the fact he forgot whether he had eaten meals or whether he had seen someone in a day. His brain played tricks on him: he was constantly checking his pockets for his keys because he would convince himself that he had them when he didn’t, and vice versa. 

“No, everything is fine,” Mutsuki lied. 

“Good. Let’s take a look at that eye,” Shiba continued. “Would you take off the eyepatch?” 

Mutsuki removed the white eyepatch that Sasaki had given him to wear.

“And how long has your kakugan remained activated?” 

“Since the dosage increase,” Mutsuki replied. 

“The entire time?” Shiba asked. He was making a note in the file. Mutsuki fidgeted with nervousness. He felt like he was walking a tightrope or back in school taking a timed test. Any misstep, any wrong answer, any small mistake could lead to failure. But he would be strong, and he would lie, and he would make it through: that was the promise he had made himself months ago and to which he remained faithful. 

“Well, it shouldn’t be much of an issue,” Shiba explained, and Mutsuki held back a sigh of relief. “Just an inconvenience, and it's to be expected. Your RC cell levels are much higher since the dosage increase. I’ll make a note of it and if the problem persists we’ll address it later.” 

Mutsuki left the appointment confident that he was hiding his ailments. According to Dr. Shiba, he was a perfect test subject, a successful experiment. 

He left the medical building and hurried back to the main offices of the CCG. The other investigators would be waiting for him to go to a meeting. He entered through the front doors, passed through the RC scanner, and began climbing the stairs up to the office on the second floor.

He was nearly at the top of the staircase when the stairs began to slip away beneath his feet. He struggled to put one foot on each ascending stair, but every time he shifted his weight forward the world seemed to fall backwards beneath him. His vision tunneled: his peripheral vision slipped away and all his focus fell on a circle of floor, and his feet, and then he was tipping forward and his knee jammed painfully against the edge of a step. The floor rushed up to meet his hands, rough carpet burning his palms, and the world swam and wavered in his vision.

Something snapped Mutsuki away from the edge of unconsciousness. His vision expanded and suddenly he could see everything in hyperfocus. The quinx squad was coming around the corner and they were rushing towards him. He could feel Sasaki’s pulse as it hammered in his throat; could see the sweat that beaded on Shirazu’s forehead; could smell the gel in Urie’s hair. Their footsteps slammed on the carpet and made Mutsuki’s entire body tremor with their force. Over everything was the overwhelming scent of flesh, of blood, and the coursing desire Mutsuki felt to bite into something soft and living. 

He could feel his kagune breaking through his skin and this time it healed so quickly that the pain was a mere pinch of fingernails. Flesh rushed across his vision: his own body, mangled. His arms sewn together and bleeding pinpricks at every place where the thread pulled through skin. His legs given the same treatment, laced together. Then his kagune split through his skin and consumed his entire body, wrapping it up like a boa constrictor, until he was a jointed, flailing creature wriggling along the earth, a centipede, and his mouth was the only part left exposed and it was open and _hungry hungry hungry._

“Mutsuki!” someone cried, and everything went black again. Mutsuki blinked, and the black fuzz began to clear out of his vision. Sasaki was grasping his shoulder. The touch anchored him as he blinked away darkness. 

“I’m okay,” Mutsuki mumbled, and he shrugged Sasaki’s hand away. “I’m just tired, I’m fine.” He did feel fine: the episode dissipated as quickly as it had come. His kagune, which had just barely peeked out of his skin, recoiled into his body. 

…...

That night Mutsuki dreamt of redness. He dreamt that he was peeling off his own skin and shedding it onto the floor, and the flesh beneath was moist and vibrant with blood. He started at his arms and peeled sheets of skin off of his body until he stood, naked, a shimmering red creature. Then he dug his nails, which were long and black, into his flesh and peeled that away, too: it fell off of his body in clumps that slapped wetly against the floor. Once he had shed his flesh he realized that where his bones should be were jointed plates as red as his blood, as his kagune, as red as the back of a centipede. 

By now, he was accustomed to monstrosity. He knew what it was like to feel as though he was living in a horrid skin. It wasn’t new to him, then, to grow a flailing insect out of his back; it wasn’t new to be transforming into a creature he feared and hated. He had fantasized many times about tugging off his skin and becoming something new. This wasn’t exactly what he had had in mind. 

Mutsuki woke to darkness and a familiar stinging pain in his back. He looked down to see his kagune wrapping around his waist in a loose embrace. He tried to relax, and his kagune retracted into his body. He took a deep breath and noticed the tight cramp of hunger in his stomach. Food had begun to repulse him. He skipped meals.He knew what it meant: he saw the packages of meat Sasaki kept in the freezer. It meant he was more ghoul than human. 

……

The lamp in the living room illuminated nothing more than a ring around the couch; the rest of the room remained shrouded in darkness. Mutsuki sat with his legs curled up beneath him and a book in his lap in the orange lamplight. The other quinxes had gone to bed, and Sasaki had drifted back into his room at some point before everyone else. 

Mutsuki heard footsteps and looked up. Sasaki emerged from his bedroom holding a green gift bag crowned with white tissue paper. Does he know? Mutsuki wondered, surprised.

“Hello,” Sasaki greeted with a smile. “Do you mind if I sit with you?” 

“Of course,” Mutsuki replied. He closed his book and set it on the coffee table. 

“I wanted to bring you something,” Sasaki began. He held the bag out to Mutsuki, and Mutsuki took it. “I...I know from your file that it’s your birthday today. It also seems like you don’t want to make a big deal out of it, so I thought I’d bring you something once everyone was asleep,” he explained. 

Mutsuki just looked at him in surprise. It was true that he had purposely not mentioned his upcoming birthday to anyone around the office--he didn’t like to make a fuss about it since it was eight days before Christmas, and in any case he had been too preoccupied to care much this year--and he certainly hadn’t expected anyone to say happy birthday, let alone buy him a gift. He was equally surprised that Sasaki actually looked a little nervous--was that a slight blush on his cheeks? 

Mutsuki realized that he was just sitting there staring at Sasaki. “Thank you,” he replied earnestly. He began to pull out the tissue paper and reached in. There were two things in the bag, but first he found a coffee mug. It was green-and-white striped, and large enough to accommodate all the coffee Mutsuki liked to drink in the morning. He set it down on the couch, and noticed that Sasaki was smiling broadly.

“I was out the other day and it reminded me of you,” Sasaki said. “If you don’t like it--”

“No, I do!” Mutsuki assured, returning Sasaki’s smile. He reached back into the bag and pulled out the second gift, a book. Of poetry.

“Is this…” Mutsuki began.

“I thought I’d pick up a copy of the book I read to you that time. You seemed to like it…” Sasaki explained uncertainly.

“Thanks a lot,” Mutsuki said with a smile. “I didn’t expect anyone to get me anything, you really didn’t have to. Not with Christmas so close…”

“Don’t worry about it!” Sasaki replied. “You work really hard, you deserve this.” 

Mutsuki wasn’t exactly sure how it happened, but on the last word Sasaki reached forward and clasped Mutsuki’s knee for only a second. It was a small gesture, but Mutsuki felt himself blushing as his thoughts spiralled to immediate confusion. 

“I’m...um...I’m going to go back to my room,” Sasaki said, somewhat awkwardly. “I hope you enjoy the book.” He nearly jumped off the couch and hurried back in the direction of his room. Mutsuki tried to thank him again, but the words wouldn’t come. He just watched Sasaki disappear back into the gloom. 

As Mutsuki was trying to fall asleep that night, thoughts of Sasaki filled his head. Mutsuki felt more than admiration: the feeling was brighter and warmer and it swelled in his stomach and into his throat as he lay in the dark contemplating Sasaki’s face. The warmth had been there, fleeting, when Sasaki touched his leg: a gesture too odd to be accidental, too confusing to be casual. Mutsuki cautiously imagined Sasaki’s hands cupping his cheeks. He felt himself blush, and he reminded himself that there was no way anyone could know what he was imagining. He focused on the way Sasaki’s hands might feel on his body, on his waist, and imagined, briefly, before his embarrassment got the best of him, the ghost of warmth on his lips.


	5. january: end

“You don’t have to worry,” Sasaki told him. “If you need to, at any point, just get behind me. It will be fine.” 

Mutsuki wasn’t worried about the threat they would be facing. He was worried about his own mental state. His blackouts had been growing more frequent: they overcame him multiple times a week now. At night, he had dreams of his kagune tearing his body apart, and when he woke in the morning he found his kagune wrapped around his waist. 

Recently, he slightest stress brought his kagune to the surface. His anxiety was building, and he could feel it pressing up from inside of him. His skin stretched tight over its sharp point. 

“Okay,” Mutsuki agreed hesitantly. 

“I promise, Tooru,” Sasaki continued. He spoke quietly, almost in a whisper. Mutsuki reddened slightly at the use of his first name. Sasaki shifted forward, and Mutsuki realized that they were standing quite close together. Mutsuki became very aware of the way his hands hung at his sides and how his lips were just slightly parted. 

Mutsuki remembered to nod in response. Sasaki’s hand brushed against his.

“Are you all right?” Sasaki whispered. He took Mutsuki’s hand and Mutsuki felt his heartbeat quicken. He had hoped that, someday, Sasaki might take his hand like that. It was odd timing, but Mutsuki felt comforted by the gesture. Maybe Sasaki was just trying to comfort him as a superior? That would make more sense, Mutsuki thought. But he wasn’t stupid, and he remembered the gentle brush of Sasaki’s hand on his knee, and the way that sometimes he caught Sasaki looking at him. Was this really happening?

A bedroom door slammed open and Sasaki jumped back. Urie walked into the kitchen and looked at them both suspiciously. 

“Urie! Are Saiko and Shirazu ready? We need to get out of here soon,” Sasaki asked quickly. He made a point to look away from Mutsuki. 

Urie shrugged and sat down at the kitchen table. Sasaki headed towards the bedrooms to bother Saiko and Shirazu, and as he did he glanced over his shoulder at Mutsuki. Mutsuki couldn’t have been sure, but he thought Sasaki’s expression was something like longing.

…...

Mutsuki spent the van ride trying not to make eye contact with Sasaki. He was successful until they neared their destination, when he accidentally looked up at the same time as Sasaki and Sasaki smiled. It couldn’t calm Mutsuki, though, like he had earlier that day and in the past. Staticky anxiety rushed through his body and made his hands tremble. He could feel his kagune trying to escape his body and blackness fuzzed in his peripheral vision.

The van jolted to a stop and the team rushed out of the doors. Mutsuki was the last one out. Dizziness swirled around his head and he almost tripped on his way out of the van. The squad was ahead of him, gripping their briefcases. Sasaki had already taken out his quinque.

For a moment, Mutsuki stood completely still. His head spun. He doubled over. Pain shot through his back, just briefly, as his kagune exploded from his body. It tore through his shirt and struck out into the air. 

Blackness crowded his vision for a second and then cleared. His sight was sharper than it had ever been, and his mind was a jumble of half-formed thoughts. The quinx squad all watched him and his vision was so clear he could see their pupils dilate and the sweat on their skin. Even as he looked at them, though, they didn’t register in his memory. They were bodies, anonymous faces in the swirl of confusion that descended upon his mind. His thoughts were gibberish screams of hunger and fear and need. He felt like he could eat the entire world. He wanted feel its blood exploding into his mouth and its bones shattering between his molars.

His kagune lunged forward under his arm and began to twine itself around his body. He couldn’t move besides sink to his knees and clutch at the kagune growing across his belly. It stretched out longer than usual so it could wrap his abdomen like armor. The kagune seemed to grow hooks on the side that pressed into his body. It slashed through his clothing and stabbed into his skin, anchoring itself in his flesh. 

Through his panic, Mutsuki heard a cracking sound as the end of the kagune split into two strands and each one worked its way over an arm, twining itself like it had around his body. Once the kagune had grown over his arms the tendrils began to expand and then they were forcing their way over his face. He screamed as the kagune grew sideways to cover his human eye. The mask of kagune dug into his skin and hooked itself tight to his face. Its spears jabbed into his eye and rooted themselves there. His skin was rapidly healing around the parasitic kagune, incorporating it into his body.

His torso and face were completely plated in armor when he felt a brutal thrust of pain in his back. A second tendril of kagune forced its way through the coiled kagune and burst from Mutsuki’s back. It writhed in the air completely out of Mutsuki’s control, flailing like a centipede held by its tail end. 

He felt nothing except hunger, and then his gaze locked onto the quinx squad. He could hear their pulses beneath their skin: their blood rushed like water splashing over rocks. It was so close he could nearly taste it. Mutsuki’s thoughts were too scrambled to permit movement yet; he was frozen save for his kagune writhing in the air. 

Sasaki stepped forward first. He carried his quinque with him and his expression was startled. Mutsuki opened his mouth to speak, but no sound came out save for a garbled scream. Sasaki lifted his quinque. He swung it in an arc towards Mutsuki’s head. Time moved very quickly, then, and the last thing Mutsuki saw before toppling into blackness was Sasaki’s face: _I’m sorry,_ his expression said. 


End file.
